Redartz: Welcome once again to the Tuesday "Follow the Leader" tradition! Generally the routine here is to await the first responder to set the tone for the week's discussion. Sometimes I'll add an extra topic to 'prime the pump'. This is one of those latter examples, thanks to a response last week from our friend Humanbelly.
During our conversation about 'big pop culture events', HB brought up the existence of major news events that still stand out in our memories (both personal and collective). So to begin with, let's take HB's ball and run with it. As for me, there were numerous such examples, but one that meant much to me was watching the Apollo 11 moon landing. Seated on the floor of my cousin's house with all the other kids, adults seated behind; all of us encircling the big console tv with the fuzzy images from space glowing in the darkened room. Even at that young age, the historical impact we felt was immense.
And now, the emphasis shift to you fine folks. Your mission: twofold; to give us a fresh topic for today, and to spin a few threads about the historical events you witnessed. Thanks in advance!
25 comments:
Three events immediately leap to mind.
During my freshman year of high school, on a Monday night, I was brushing my teeth ahead of going to bed when I heard Howard Cosell interrupt the Monday Night Football broadcast to say that John Lennon had been shot. While at the age of 14 I don't think I fully grasped the magnitude of John Lennon, I sure do now. Here is a link to that telecast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gcdz1IRVoM
The next occurred later that year during our spring break. I'd just come home from morning track practice and flipped on the TV. President Reagan had been shot just moments earlier. Frank Reynolds of ABC News was at the anchor desk, and I watched this unfold over the next few hours.
Lastly, 9/11 remains a vivid memory. As I type this, I look across my classroom to where the television used to be mounted on the wall. Our current principal, then a science teacher in the room below me, sent an email that I saw around 8:10. It simply said "Turn on your TV". I did, and we watched in horror at what was happening in our nation. Those first images are as plain in my mind as they were almost two decades ago.
Doug
Doug mentioned two from back in the day that occurred to me as well: the shootings of Lennon and Reagan - the latter was memorable because it happened during school hours and I remember our principal (a rather belligerent nun) standing in the hall next to the school's front door listening to the breaking news on a transistor radio with the volume turned all the way up. Something similar played out about two months later, when someone attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II.
Another really memorable news event was when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986. That one really shocked everyone in my school, and I remember watching the unfolding coverage during geography/social studies class that afternoon.
Edo, in regard to the Challenger, we'd just come downstairs from our 8:00 class - I was a sophomore in college. We heard the news in the Commons, so decided to skip the rest of our morning classes and watch the news back in the dorm.
Doug
I also recall where I was when Elvis died. I can place myself at my aunt's and uncle's home in the west suburbs of Chicago, where my sister and I often went to spend a week in the summer. Great memories of comics and Slurpee cups at the 7-11 down the street from their house.
Doug
Here's a side question for today (although I'm more interested in everyone's newsie memories!).
Name a comics writer in whom you have the utmost confidence. In other words, when you come to something written by this person, but of which you've never read, you know it's going to be solid.
My guy - and this is a relatively new appreciation based on the amount of Marvel black-and-white material I've read recently - is Doug Moench. Heroes, sci-fi, pulp fiction... Moench could do it all convincingly. A new favorite.
Doug
Roger Stern; he may not be my *absolute* favorite, but he's right up there, and he has rarely, if ever, disappointed me.
And although he's not just a writer, Walt Simonson: I've yet to be disappointed by anything in which he's served as both writer and artist.
Edo -
I am definitely on board with Roger Stern. Cap, Avengers, ASM... nice jobs dot his career.
Doug
A writer in whom I have utmost confidence: Roy Thomas.
I'm right there with Doug and Edo for Challenger. "Touch the face of God" I always thought was one of Reagan's best lines and the delivery was spot-on.
I'm not sure whether the next would be personal or collective or both, but the Iranian revolution stands out to me. My mother was watching it on TV, and I must have been prattling on something, when she turned to me and said, "Be quiet! This is history."
Yep, and the hostage crisis which played out for years after didn't let us forget it.
Yeah, Reagan getting shot and the Iranian hostage crisis were huge at the time; they were the top stories on the news even up here in Canada. I was in junior high (grade 8 I think) when the Challenger exploded; I remember some people crying about it in class.
Remember when Skylab II came down in the late 70s? There was some confusion as to where it might land and I got all paranoid, thinking it might land on me so every time I went outside I'd look up. I was very relieved when I heard it came down in the Indian Ocean.
As for comics writers I always trust, I can agree with Moench and Stern even though I haven't read everything they've written. I'll add Peter David too; I haven't read any of his DC stuff (or his Star Trek novels) yet, but from his Marvel work I think I'd probably like them.
Let's see, news events that stick in the mind...
The moon landing. I would have been asleep when it happened but I remember the build-up, and Mrs Aiden, our primary school teacher, getting us to make a lunar lander from grocery boxes. I must admit I had mixed feelings about the moon landing. It was exciting that they'd done it but also disappointing that they didn't find any aliens when they got there.
Chernobyl and the threat of fallout landing all over Europe. I remember them talking about how we might all have to take Iodine tablets to save us.
The Hillsborough Disaster, when 96 soccer fans died in a crush at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, and people stood on it, demolishing it with hammers.
9-11.
The 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and the threat of a whole bunch of nuclear power plants deciding to blow up because of it.
As for reliable comic book writers, I will echo Colin's nomination of Rascally Roy.
Well, great choice Red! Yes I'll go with my first of many unbelievable memories already mentioned, which was the Moon Landing and the next day running outside to see if I could see the flag on the moon.
The writer I trust most, John Byrne.
Selenarch- good call; Reagan's response to the Challenger disaster was one of the highest points of his presidency. I still remember him comforting the victims' families, and giving voice to our national grief.
Doug- as for your question, many good names have been mentioned today. That said, I'll go with Roger Stern. And a somewhat more current runner-up: Paul Dini. Love his stuff.
Killraven- yes; me too. I had a small telescope as a kid, and made certain to point it at the moon in hopes of catching a glimpse of the LEM. Didn't see it, but had fun looking. And it is pretty cool to think that, with no atmosphere, all those footprints are still up there.
And why do I have this sudden craving for a glass of Tang?
Late to the party but I'll jump all the way up to referencing Doug's first post and say that I have a very lasting memory of when Lennon was shot. I was a freshman in college, also watching MNF and was informed by Howard Cosell. I was sitting in a recliner and happened to be in the middle of reading Lennon's recent Playboy Interview (yes, I sometimes read the interviews). Whoa! Talk about freaky.
As to writers, my personal fave from my time of peak comics interest was Steve Engelhart. He had the Cap Secret Empire/Nomad run along side the Avengers Defenders War/Celestial Madonna arc and probably some other storylines that I don't remember right now.
Tom
How on earth did I forget that yesterday was Tuesday-?? (Well-- it was an extra-long weekend. . . and it was a darned busy day, tbh. . . ). Can I still stop by water-cooler, here?
The first truly clear, distinct, and upsetting world-event memories I have would be the assassinations of both Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. I would have been 7, but my folks were already loving RFK, so I had a little-kid emotional investment in him at the time as well. . . and understood that he was the little brother of JFK, who was beloved in our family. And the murder of Dr King hit our teaching community especially hard, as there was concern about possible racial tensions amongst our students (our town was roughly 40% African-American). Lots of anxious late-night phone calls. But nothing ever came close to erupting--- EVERYONE was devastated. . . even us littler kids.
Moon-landing-- yup. The feed for a LOT of it was upside down at first. . . doesn't ANYONE else remember that? (I swear--- I'm not bonkers!)
Oh gosh-- the Apollo 1 fire was just horrible, too. We were right at that astronauts-are-EVERYTHING age, and I remember trying to imagine some way SOME how that those men might have survived after all, hoping to see a different end to the story whenever I turned the TV back on.
Even though it's not from my childhood, 9/11 remains the most searing and visceral of this type of memory. My normal commute at the time took me through DC on 395-South, which is just right there, next to the Pentagon. I hadn't left yet, though, and happened to catch a passing report on the radio about a plane hitting the WTC. By the time I turned on the TV, the second plane had hit, and a local news reporter was in the Pentagon, as it seemed like a potential attack, maybe. While he was talking, the plane hit the Pentagon-- though on the far side from him. I knew I wasn't going to make it down there-- and called and cancelled my expected lumber order (the dispatcher was himself barely functioning), and tried to get hold of my wife. Her office at the time was about a mile from the Pentagon-- maybe a touch less. She wasn't going to be able to get home anytime soon.
A particularly appalling conspiracy theory that never quite gets eradicated was the "It was a bomb at the Pentagon, there was NO plane--" one. It makes me ill. My wife had a long-time friend and colleague who was stuck in the usual stop&go traffic jam right there on 395-North, right next to the building. She heard how loud the jet was, looked over and saw it come down and hit that west wall. She could see the faces in the airplane windows in that last split-second. "No plane. . ."-- jesus. . .
There were still some fire and a lot of smoke the next day, when I did go past it on my way to work the next morning.
HB
At on the back half of 2yrs old, I still vaguely remember the impact of the JFK assassination.
The original Beatlemania is firmly imbeded in my mind, though. I can't remember if we watched the Ed Sullivan Show when the Beatles landed in America. Probably didn't, even when we watched Sullivan every Sunday night. My father ran our single b&w tv, and he was a country-western/Motown(?!) fan. He & my mom literally hated the Beatles.
The moon landing was incredible. Getting televisions rolled into our classrooms was a huge deal back then. NASA gave us all model kits of the lunar module (sorry to hear some of you folks had to construct one outta egg cartons and such). Later we got a floppy vinyl record with the "One small step for Man..." speech.
Begged my mom to get me Tang. My parents told me I wasn't smart enough to be an astronaut. "Just get a job at the mill." So encouraging, my parents.
I did get Tang, and it was AWFUL!! It sat in the cupboard forever after my first glass. Mom told me never to ask for anything ever again.
I agree with everyone's picks on writers, but I'm going to throw Marv Wolfman's name in the hat.
Annnd boy-- that's about the most somber post I've ever made, isn't it? So sorry, friends-- it was the one drawback that I could envision the topic having when it crossed my mind. The "Where were you when?" events tend not to be ones with brighter memories attached, I suppose. . . .
BUT-- on that consistent-writer question:
A couple of extremely solid (and deserving) candidates mentioned above happen to have an "except-for" asterisk in my own playbook. Doug Moench was saddled with WEREWOLF BY NIGHT for, like, the whole last half of its run. . . and that title just could NOT get on track to save its life. The writing wasn't doing anything to salvage it from the dreadful art.
And-- I am a big fan of Roger Stern, but I've noted a couple of times that his tenure on the INCREDIBLE HULK was not a good run at all. He could not find an "in" into making the title his own. Oo-- and one more (although it borders on sacrilege). . . Roy Thomas' late run on Avengers West Coast was not up to the standards he'd been setting in the late Silver/early Bronze Age.
Who do I like, without reservation?
I'll certainly echo the Peter David mention above.
And raise it with Kurt Busiek-- although that's largely based on his Avengers and Astro City work.
And-- how's about the late Mark Gruenwald? I'm trying to think if I ever read anything of his that I didn't care for, y'know?
Oh, it gets me to thinkin' about breaking out a long-box or two. . .
HB
Celebrity deaths:
I was in a department store when it was announced Elvis died. People were grabbing his records like they were never going to be available again! I found his last original studio album, Moody Blue, in a bargain bin (it features the semi-hit "Way Down", that I liked at the time). It was on translucent blue vinyl. Wish I still had it.
Rod Serling's death came over the car radio when my parents left me in the car while my sister was getting treatments for an illness. I was so bummed, but let's face it, The man always had a cigarette in his hand.
"Hogan's Heroes" was a favorite show of mine growing up. It probably wasn't a hit over at the UK (a comedy based in a Nazi prison camp), but it ran in the States for years. It was announced, again over car radio, that Bob Crane (Hogan) was found dead in bondage gear beaten by a baseball bat. Such an ugly lie.
He was bludgeoned to death with a camera tri-pod in his sleep. While watching a rerun of Hogan's Heroes with my mother, she abruptly squaked "That Bob Crane, he died of AIDs!"
I looked over at her and said, "No Mom, he had his head bashed-in while he slept". She screamed at me, "Well.. IT'S THE SAME THING!!!"
Unbelievable. She makes me shake my head every 15 minutes, when I'm around her. "You can pick your friends, etc, etc.. "
HB- ah, the door is always open here, and open mike night is every night! As for the 'downer' tendencies of such historical memories, it's almost a given. Seems like the term "snapshot memory" had something to do with this. The shock and trauma of a major unfortunate event burns itself into the memory. Just like your thoughts on 9/11. In our case, my wife and I were sleeping in when my Mom called, in tears, waking us up to tell us to turn on the tv. We stayed on that couch for hours, not believing what we were seeing.
But to try a more positive direction- July 4, 1976. The Bicentennial still brings fond memories; a family cookout, my sister in the local parade, fireworks...
KD- Not a fan of Tang, eh? Did you ever try Grape Tang? Anyone else remember that one? I loved Tang, but one must wonder if it would still be so appealing now. Probably a HUGE amount of sugar...
Tang was honestly dreadful.
My buddy and I drank GALLONS of it just so's we could make each other laugh by exaggerating how awful it tasted while drinking it... Go figure.
But, hey, a related product (which we may have mentioned before?)?-- SPACE FOOD STICKS! Man, I can still bring forth their very specific sweet, gooey, fudgey, totally-artificial flavor-! "Food of the Astronauts". My pathologically short-cut oriented Mom tried at one point to just send us to school with, like, two of those for our lunch, rather than making a sandwich, 'cause "It's just the same as a full meal!". Hooooo-boy--- (pretty good dessert treat, tho--)
HB
Oh yeah, Space Food Sticks! A common inclusion in my lunchbox as well (alternating with a pop-tart). Looking back, NASA was a great boon to marketing...
Redartz & Humanbelly-
I never knew they made Tang in a different flavor than orange, but since my first experience with the stuff I'm not exactly inticiced.
I'm at a point of my life where I try to drink real 100% fruit juice, mostly berry based. If I drink a fruit flavored mix, it's Metamucil. Lol!
9/11 was almost surreal to me. I woke in the morning after a long night of pool league shooting (with plenty of beers also), and just flipped the tv news on out of habit. I had the sound off.
I saw one of the Twin Towers smoking. Thought to myself, "Oh, it must be the anniversary of when those jackasses tried to blow it up". Then went on my way.
I turned on my car radio and was blown away. I first thought it might've been some kind of auto-pilot failure. 3 minutes later the second plane hit the other tower. I was listening to Howard Stern and their broadcast was incredibly explicit.
The 4Th plane, that apparently was downed by the passengers rebelling, crashed not very far from where I work.
Supposively it circled the city of Pittsburgh, but I guess the terrorists weren't impressed by our buildings.
Steve Gerber was another writer I could usually count on as being entertaining.
Back on the "celebrity death" kick, I, like every red-blooded American boy in the 70's who had "THE POSTER", was crushed to hear Farrah Fawcett died. Car radio bad news again, on my way home from work.
As soon as I pulled into my home & parked, I heard Michael Jackson also died. I thought, "Yep. He upstaged her. Nobody's going to give her a second thought now."
I will say this about that (plus much of my "get off my lawn rant"):
I remember during the Iranian Hostage Crisis ABC debuted their 30 minute program after the late news that counted the days, covered any developments and summarized where we were as a nation. I can't remember when it happened, again, never wrote anything down, but I do remember that one night, quite into the whole thing, during a final segment, ABC covered another different story. Just a mention in passing moment. I thought that was significant. They weren't stopping their coverage but were admitting that perhaps there wasn't much there anymore.
Second story, and it hits close to home because it's Texas, Baby Jessica in the well. I know Midland is a good 10 hour drive but that's nothing in Texas. And for many of us, it wasn't a story that we heard about after the fact, it played out in our living rooms for the entire, what, 50 something hours. The media was scrambling for someone to talk to...
Last, and this is the one that really burned my butt, the Centennial Park bombing during the Olympics. I was working nights by 1996 and I spent much of the night listening to my Walkman. I could get AM/FM and TV. The major channels, ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS. I was listening to the overnight sports wrap on AM when the blast went off. For much of the night, I was bouncing back and forth between AM and TV stations. The AM guys were trying to get any information they could out but were mindful of the fact that there was much going on and happening fast. They kept repeating "We're just sports guys and we're trying to get you as much information as we can..." Switch to TV, and guys like Dan Rather were reporting speculations as facts. It was terrorists, there were reports of multi bombers, multi bombs discovered... There was a rush to report anything first, no matter if it was accurate. Opened my eyes...
About Tang. My mother would send my jars of Tang and Nestea Tea mix mixed half and half to get my through those West Texas winters...
(Baby, if you've ever wondered
Wondered whatever became of me
I'm living on the air in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, WKRP
Got kind of tired packing and unpacking
Town to town and up and down the dial
Maybe you and me were never meant to be
But baby think of me once in awhile
I'm on WKRP in Cincinnati...)
That was such a great show.
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